


A Quiet Place to Read

by lolcat202



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:24:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8804350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolcat202/pseuds/lolcat202
Summary: No attacks AU. Laura finds a familiar face in the library she's retreated to after leaving Adar's Cabinet.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassiopeiasara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiopeiasara/gifts).



Everyone thinks it’s the books that drew Laura to the library, but it’s not at all. She loves the books, but it’s the quiet that appeals to her. After eight years in Adar’s cabinet, one year in intensive treatment for breast cancer, and six months trying to figure out how to live again when she’d all but given in to dying, all she wants anymore is a quiet place where she can keep her head down, do her job, and not have anyone demanding anything more from her than a reference number.

She hasn’t seen anyone from Secretary Roslin’s life since the day she walked out of the Caprica City government complex. Richard hasn't bothered to try to reach her, even when it became obvious that her resignation for “health reasons” was, in fact, for health reasons. Wally has called, keeps calling, but she just can’t stand the thought of talking to him.

It’s not the first time she’s done this, withdrawn from her previous life. This time, though, it’s a lot easier. None of her friends from before the accident have called her in years, except for Marcie, and Marcie knows well enough to give her space when she needs it. Every day when she gets home, she looks at her phone and tells herself to dial Marcie’s number. Every day, she pours a glass of wine instead.

Quiet. She needs quiet. Just for a little while longer, while she figures out who this new Laura Roslin is.

***

 _People don’t read anymore_ , she thinks as she stares at the sad stack of books that need reshelving. They come into the public library to use the bathroom, or the computers, or the quiet rooms that she discovered pretty quickly were not where teenagers went to _study_. On the third day of her new job, she found out the hard way why there was a fully stocked cabinet of disinfectant wipes in the supply room.

Not that she was above making out in study rooms, back in the days when she was a college student. But at least she had books in the room. Books that might have wound up on the floor, but books that she did, eventually, bother to _read_.

Now, all she cleans out of the quiet rooms are magazines and crumpled up paper towels that she’d rather die than touch without gloves on.

Kids these days. She leaves the restacking of magazines in the racks to the younger volunteers with heartier constitutions and makes her way through the tables in the middle of the library’s domed great hall, dropping a book here and there on her cart. Owner’s manuals, reference books, the occasional anthology. People don’t read for fun enough. Where are the mysteries? Where are the classics? Hell, at this point, she’d be happy to see a trashy romance novel or two sitting abandoned on the heavy walnut tables. She has half a mind to clear the stacks of Prima, or Moore, or Rayburn, and leave them sitting out on the tables, just to see if someone will pick them up.

Apparently, she’s not the only one. A copy of _Dark Day_ is lying on one of the tables, opened to a spot roughly three quarters through the book. She looks around to see if the reader might be nearby, but it’s just her, a teenage volunteer, and the same shady jackass that’s been sitting at the computer bank and smelling like rancid takeout for the last week. She closes the book and drops it on her cart. _Dark Day_. It’s one of those books she’s never gotten around to reading, but now that she has more time on her hands than she’d expected a year and a half ago, maybe she’ll make the time.

It’s not like she has more pressing plans. She tugs at her hair as she makes her way through the library, as if pulling on it will make it grow back faster. _Leave it alone_ , she reminds herself. Shelving books keeps her hands busy. Keeps her hands off her hair. Keeps her from touching other parts of her body that her cancer has destroyed. Shelving books is what she’s paid to do these days.

Shelving books is something she can handle. Sort by call number, find a stool, plan the attack on the stacks stretched out before her. She has all but one book back in its proper place. _Dark Day_ still sits, red leather binding sadly leaning alone against the steel grey cart.

 _You have my sympathies_ , she thinks.

Prima is on the top shelf of the stacks, and as tall as she is, she’s about three inches too short to reach where it goes on the stepstool. Well, nobody’s looking. She kicks off her heels and climbs up onto the bookshelf, using one hand to hold her balance while she tries in vain to shove the book back in its place with the other.

“I was reading that, you know,” comes a voice from behind her, and it catches her so much by surprise that she loses her grip on both the book and the shelf. She twists quickly enough mid-fall to manage landing, if not gracefully, on her own two feet. She doesn’t miss the _thwack_ of the hard bound edges of the book smacking full-force on the man standing behind her.

 _That’s probably going to leave a mark_.

Not the first, she notices, as she takes him in. Gray hair, glasses, and a face that’s seen more than its fair share of battles. Once she tears her eyes away from the angry red divot her clumsiness has left on his forehead, she realizes that she knows him.

Well, she’s met him. Commander Adama from Galactica. The first person from Secretary Roslin’s previous life that she’s seen in eighteen months, and the last she’d expected.

“Commander, I’m so sorry. “

He shrugs and smiles. “I have a hard head. So I’m told.”

“Not for that,” she corrects, then realizes what she’s said. “Well, yes, for that, but also for interrupting your reading. I didn’t see anyone at the table, so…”

“You never heard of a bathroom break?”

Of course she’s heard of bathroom breaks, but her mother had always drilled into her that good manners meant not discussing bathroom habits in public. Of course, good manners also dictated not throwing books at people, so she’s 0 for two. She picks up the book and offers it to the Commander with another apology, which he ignores in favor of staring at her. She can feel a blush creeping up her cheeks under his careful scrutiny.

It takes him a beat or two to place her. “Madam Secretary?” he finally asks.

She can’t blame him for not recognizing her right away. The power suits are gone, the security detail is gone, the authority is gone. Her hair is mostly gone as well, only now making its reappearance after her treatment.  “It’s just Laura now,” she says.

He holds out his hand, and she gives him the book, not realizing her mistake until he tucks it under his arm and extends his hand again. This time she meets it with her own. His handshake is warm and solid, and she matches the pressure with her own. She may not be a politician anymore, but being a librarian has hardly reduced her to a shrinking violet.

“Just Laura,“ he echoes, "Just Bill. Nice to meet you again.”

Of course he’s just Bill now. She’d retired his ship, and him right along with it. She isn’t sure what’s worse, that she assaulted him with literature, or that she’d reminded him of how…unfortunate that their last meeting had been. “Well, Just Bill, I’m sorry that I didn’t keep your place. I hope you remember where you left off.”

He opens the book and fans through the pages, stopping here and there until he finds the right spot. “I’ve read this book about fifty times. I probably have it memorized by now.”

“Not that I want to drive away an actual reader, but maybe you should consider buying your own? I hear paperbacks are far less painful when someone drops them on your head.”

He gives a small chuckle at that. “I had a copy. Somehow it didn’t make it off the ship.”

His ship. His battle-worn, battle-scarred, beat-up and sent-out-to-pasture ship. At the time, Laura couldn’t understand why he’d be so attached to it. Now that she has her own battle scars to contend with every time she takes a shower or looks in a mirror, she can empathize.

“I hear the museum is quite a success,” she says, hoping that it’s not an insult to his former home and career.

“I hear the information systems aren’t networked,” he quips, and she grins at him.

“No sir, I was told by a very stern military figure that networked systems had no place on a battlestar.” _In no uncertain terms,_ she could add, but she won’t. Vetoing the network on the Galactica was the last thing she’d done before she left office, a small parting gift to the man who seemed to have absolutely no respect for her, but had won her grudging admiration with his speech. Sooner or later, he’d said, the time comes when we have to answer for our choices, and going up against Commander Adama wasn’t a choice she was particularly interested in having come back to haunt her.

Besides, if kids need a networked computer to tell them where the bathrooms are, the public school systems are clearly not doing their job.

She expects a witty response, but he just looks at her with a half-smile. And keeps looking at her with that small grin, until she realizes that she's standing barefoot on ugly orange carpeting with a man who, the last time they met, pretty much hated her with every fiber of his being. She tugs at the hair that barely brushes her collar now, an new nervous habit that she can't quite seem to kick.

“Well, now that you have your book back, I should leave you to it. We close in half an hour, though, so maybe check it out and read it someplace a little safer than here?” She reaches a foot behind her to try and find her shoes. The way he stares at her makes her feel completely naked, so why she thinks her shoes will help is beyond her, but at least it's  _something_. At least, in her heels, she’ll be able to meet his eyes head-on. Her toes connect with leather, and she tries to sneak herself back into her shoes without looking like a total idiot.

The half-smile blossoms into a full one across his face. Too late for that.

“I like it here,” he says. “It’s quiet.”

***

He sits at the table, leafing through the pages of Dark Day until she sends the teenager behind the desk to kick everyone out of the library for the night. He closes the book and taps the cover a couple of  times, looking very much like he's saying a fond goodbye to an old friend, before he gets up and reluctantly sets the book on her abandoned shelving cart. She ducks behind the reference desk, hoping that he'll leave before she manages to gather her things. When she finally tracks down her purse and her jacket, the library is empty. She sends the student worker home for the night, digs out her keys, and switches off the lights. _Quiet_.

There are only two cars left in the lot by the time she makes it outside. Two cars, and one man. He's leaning up against an old junker parked nose-to-nose with her sedan with his arms crossed.

“Commander,” she says. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

“Just Laura,” he replies, “I may be out of the service, but an officer always behaves as a gentleman.”

She clicks the lock on her key fob and drops her purse and jacket into the backseat. “Well, Just Bill, the lady is safely at her destination, so you can go.”

He doesn't move, just stands silhouetted underneath the yellowish lights in the parking lot. “Not until you’re in your car and on your way.” He reaches behind her to pull her door open. When was the last time someone opened a door for her? Not Richard, certainly. It's a small gesture, but it warms her heart. She settles into the seat of her car, but before she can reach for the seatbelt, he has it in his hand.

“Another thing they teach you in the military. Always be safe.”

She clicks the belt into position. “They teach you that in politics too. I imagine it works about as well as it does in the military.”

“You’re still standing,” he says.

She raises an eyebrow. Sitting, more like, but who is she to quibble over details? “So are you,” she shoots back.

“I have two more chapters of _Dark Day_. See you tomorrow?”

She nods. She’ll be here tomorrow. And she's surprised by how much she looks forward to seeing him tomorrow as well. “We open at nine.”

“Nine it is,” he confirms. “And by the way,” he says as she pulls her car door closed, “I like your hair.”


End file.
